EMC cites poor global economic conditions for not reaching its sales goals for the third quarter and lowers sales expectations for the fourth.

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EMC revenue misses mark, blames global IT spending dip

Blaming poor global economic conditions, EMC Corp. executives last week said they fell short of their sales goals for the third quarter and lowered expectations for this quarter.

EMC's revenue of $5.28 billion was below the financial analysts' consensus expectation of $5.46 billion. Its net income of $626 million for the quarter also missed expectations.

EMC lowered its revenue guidance for the year to $21.6 billion to $21.7 billion. Its previous forecast was $22 billion to $22.04 billion. EMC revenue grew 6% and its profit increased 3% over last year, ending the company's 10-quarter streak of at least 10% gains in both areas.

"We were disappointed that we did not meet internal revenue expectations, and we interrupted our string of 10 quarters of top- and bottom-line growth," EMC CEO Joe Tucci said on the company's earnings call.

CommVault offers snapshot technology without full backups

CommVault Systems Inc. today launched IntelliSnap Recovery Manager, a repackaged version of its array-based snapshot software that works as a standalone product.

IntelliSnap Recovery Manager is based on the IntelliSnap Connect Program that CommVault launched in January. IntelliSnap lets storage vendors integrate their array-based snapshotswith the SnapProtect module in CommVault's Simpana backup application. The new software works independently of Simpana, making the snapshot technology available to customers of any backup software vendor. Simpana, or another backup product, is required to perform full backups and archiving.

Recovery Manager costs $10,000 for up to 25 servers without capacity limits. If customers' needs grow beyond 25 servers, they can upgrade to Simpana or add another 25-server license.

Enterprise-class phase-change memory on the way, but roadblocks remain

Currently, there are no enterprise-grade storage products available that make use of phase-change memory -- a type of non-volatile random access memory. However, PCM chips are in development for data storage and there are currently chips in production for mobile phones.

Phase-change memory (PCM) chips use a glass-like material called chalcogenide as a storage medium. Chalcogenide is made up of germanium, antimony and tellurium, and is also used in CD-RW and DVD-RWs. While those media rely on the material's optical properties, PCM makes use of the material's electrical resistivity. Each cell in the chip consists of chalcogenide material between two electrodes. Electrical currents are used to heat the material to switch it between two states (or phases) -- crystalline and amorphous. Cells in an amorphous or liquid state represent a "0", and cells in a crystalline or solid state represent a "1." Systems are able to read each bit by recognizing the lower electrical resistance of cells in a crystalline state.

Startup Yottabyte develops OS for enterprise cloud storage

Yottabyte came out of stealth last week with an operating system that the startup claims will handle most storage management features and enable companies to build private, public and hybrid enterprise cloud storage.

Yottabyte Enterprise 2.0 has been in beta for several months and became generally available today. An edition of the software for service providers is due by mid-2013. The vendor bills it as a tool to help enterprises and cloud service providers build Google- and Amazon-like clouds using commodity hardware or running on an existing storage area network (SAN).

Storage virtualization solutions help make the most of virtualization

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Server virtualization allows much higher rates of system usage, but the resulting increases in network traffic pose significant challenges for enterprise storage. The simple "single server, single network port" paradigm has largely been displaced by servers running multiple workloads and using numerous network ports for communication, resiliency and storage traffic.

Virtual workloads are also stressing storage for tasks, including desktop instances, backups, disaster recovery (DR), and test and development.

At Gartner Symposium/ITxpo here last week, Stanley Zaffos, a Gartner research vice president, outlined the implications of server virtualization on storage and explained how storage virtualization solutions, the right approach, and the proper tool set can help organizations mitigate the impact on enterprise storage.

Backup Exec upgrade woes still drag Symantec down

Symantec executives said they are still struggling to repair the "self-inflicted wounds" that have caused license sales of Backup Exec to plummet. During the company's earnings call Wednesday, CEO Steve Bennett and CFO James Beer said fixing Backup Exec 2012 problems remains a high priority three months into Bennett's tenure.

Backup Exec licensing revenue dropped 9% last quarter from the same quarter in 2011. That compares to a 1% increase in Symantec's overall revenue to $1.7 billion, and a 2% increase to $595 million for its backup and storage products. The storage gains were driven by sales of NetBackup and integrated backup appliances.

The latest Backup Exec upgrade has been a headache for Symantec execs from the start. When Backup Exec 2012 was released early this year, unhappy users took to Symantec message boards and social media to slam changes in the interface and management features.

Nimble Storage hybrid array improves law firm's VDI performance

When traditional spinning disk arrays came up short on performance for its virtual desktop infrastructure, Minneapolis-based law firm Lindquist & Vennum switched to a hybrid array from Nimble Storage Inc.

The Nimble Storage hybrid array's solid-state drives (SSDs) provide enough performance for the company's 350 persistent virtual desktops, as well as other applications.

The hybrid storage array has performed so well that, in addition to the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), it handles almost all of the law firm's business-application servers and its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system, the firm's systems engineer Derek Schostag said.

DataDirect tunes up Web Object Scaler cloud storage platform

DataDirect Networks (DDN) last week took steps to improve data protection and performance of its Web Object Scaler (WOS) cloud storage platform, adding the ability to apply replication and erasure coding in the latest version.

Previous versions of the object-based storage platform required customers to choose between replication and erasure codes. WOS 2.5 uses replication among data centers in conjunction with erasure coding within one data center so if a drive fails, rebuilds are done locally.

The vendor claims the combination reduces latency and accelerates performance. By replicating data and incorporating the ObjectAssure erasure code-based protection algorithm, WOS can recreate an object locally 4,000% faster without depending on the wide area network (WAN), according to Jeff Denworth, DDN's vice president of marketing.

Carbonite CEO says the company needed Zmanda for database backup

Carbonite CEO David Friend said his company acquired database backup vendor Zmanda because the PC cloud backup that Carbonite offers falls short for most small- and medium-sized businesses.

Friend said Carbonite backs up 300 million new files a day to its cloud and adds a petabyte of storage every two weeks to keep up with demand for its consumer and business services. But he said businesses are demanding database backup to go with the PC and mobile devices that Carbonite protects.

"We had to add database backup," Friend said. "Our lack of ability to back up applications like SQL and Exchange is the biggest hole in our service. A lot of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) won't consider Carbonite because we do PC backup and not database backup. They say, 'We love your PC backups but we want to be able to get our PCs and servers backed up with one vendor. We don't want one vendor for PCs and another vendor for servers.'"

NovaStor revs NovaBackup for DR services

Data protection vendor NovaStor last week announced it has released the latest version of its NovaBackup products, which the company said are optimized for managed service providers to offer disaster recovery services on top of their backup and restore services.

Version 14 of the NovaBackup lineup adds new disaster recovery (DR), virtual machine and remote management features, according to the company. NovaBackup 14 has the ability to restore images onto partitions of any size, plus its Central Management Console can manage NovaBackup installations via the Web, the company said. DR tasks can be managed in LAN and WAN environments, according to NovaStor. NovaBackup is compatible with Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Microsoft SQL 2012, Exchange 2010, and the latest Hyper-V and VMware environments, NovaStor said. The product supports Hyper-V clusters and Cluster Shared Volume.

Dot Hill announces new trial and trade-in programs

SAN storage provider Dot Hill today announced a new Try-and-Buy program as well as a Trade-in program.

The programs aim to offer affordable pricing and facilitate the comparison of Dot Hill AssuredSAN storage products alongside competitors. They are offered through authorized resellers and the Dot Hill Channel organization. The Try-and-Buy program makes available a 30-day trial period for the AssuredSAN Pro 5000 series, AssuredSAN 4000 series and AssuredSAN 3000 series, while the Trade-in program allows customers to receive up to 25% off on new products. Both will be available to customers in North America and Europe.

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